WHY WE SHOULD LEAVE IRAQ

SIXTH DRAFT


"[Karl] Marx will declare that wartime patriotism is the ideological superstructure of the imperialist class interest, whereas [Sigmund] Freud will detect an element of sadism in the enthusiasm of the individual wartime volunteer."

Sigfried Bernfeld, as cited in Michael Schneider, Neurosis and Civilization (1975).


"Men make their own history, whatever its outcome may be, in that each person follows his own conscioulsy desired end....But... we have seen that the many individual wills active in history for the most part produce results quite other than those intended--often quite the opposite.

Friedrich Engels, Selected Works.


"Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circustances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brain of the living. And just when they seem engaged in revolutionizing themselves and things, in creating something that has never yet existed, precisely in such periods of revolutionary crisis they anxiously conjure up the spirits of the past to their service and borrow from the names, battle cries and costumes in order to present the new scene of world history in this time-honored disguise and this borrowed language. [emphasis added.]

Karl Marx, The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte.

Note: The three quotations above have been adapted from Richard Lichtman, The Production of Desire, The Integration of Ppsychoanalysis and Marxist Theory (New York, The Free Press, 1982.)


BACKGROUND

The recent debate in Congress about whether to have a timetable for leaving Iraq is remiss. It fits into the string of mediocre strategies and tactics which began when the Bush Administration decided to invade, and has continued ever since. Strategic blindness rules the day in Washington, D.C.

It’s as if all now subscribe to the view, expounded by a man on a television news talk show a couple of months ago, a so-called neo-conservative, an “3Arab” says he in his endless television appearances: That no one really knew Iraq. Hence the invasion? Hell!

The debate in Congress smacks of similar dishonesty, of fraud. Thousands of dead and wounded later, American and Iraqi, and a barbaric devastation and dismantlement of a defenseless country that meant us no harm–-and yet Congress is concerned about the mid-term elections! The television man is incapable of empathy or courage. So is Congress.

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6/27/06

[NOTE: CHANCE ENCOUNTERS, YET AGAIN! I've edited out adjectives about the television man, the "3Arab," because I felt bad afterwards. There's quite a lot of anger in me about sending American troops to yet another adventure--the first was Lebanon in the early 1980s--without proper assessment. This one tops the Lebanon adventure by scores, and has resulted in the dismantlement and destruction of an Arab country.

The television man and another Lebanese right-wing Israel-centric fellow separately have staged chance encounters with me near my place. They must have a radar that tells them when I'm out and at what corners of what streets they can find me, walking or jogging. :)

If they think that I'd be intimidated by these encounters, they should think again. I've edited out the adjectives more because I felt bad about my harshness, albeit deserved, than because of their silly intimidation tactics, sponsored of course by an organized group or a foreign power--they only know. For all: This newsletter is staunchly independent and will remain so. So much so that I avoid accepting invitations to events sponsored by Arab embassies. For instance, I went once to an Egytian embassy event and felt awful afterwards for being critical of Egypt. Since then, I avoid all such events.]

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Nearly all in Washington D.C. are tied to the expansive military-industrial-right-wing-think-tank-Uncle-Tom-protectorates-complex–-the infamous military-industrial complex, expanded (the Complex). They all blabber away at the same mantra: To leave Iraq is to see the terrorists win.

Let’s play with this logic. Let’s put it the SaudiPolitics’ way: To say that we will stay in Iraq to deny a victory to the terrorists is to say that the over 300 million Arab Sunni who (in effect) are resisting America’s occupation of Iraq are in the moral wrong. It’s to say that it is wrong to resist foreign occupation; that those who do, in effect 300 million of them, all are terrorists.

Underlying this pathological self-righteousness is the secret wish that once we achieve this or that one goal (e.g., arrest the Iraqi President, kill Zarqawi, clean up Falloujah, Ramadi, Tel Afar, Baghdad, change the government in Iran, and so on)–-that it’ll all be over. It won’t. I’ll explain later. (Actually, it could get much worse.)

What gave (and continues to give) strength to the Bush Administration Iraqi policies is the support he had received (and continues to) from liberals These saw in this President a chance to civilize Arabs, and make life easier for Israel (not the other way around!); and Mr. Bush and Mr. Rove saw in the liberals a chance to steal away a good part of the Jewish community. These liberals have given Mr. Bush terrific cover and justification for his Iraqi policies.

In contrast, Ralph Nader and Kevin Zeese (Kevin is running for the U.S. Senate in Maryland on an anti-war platform) recently told this writer that 52% of Maryland Republicans are against the war. Imagine: Republicans are against the war, and a (once) progressive friend is for it. Go figure.

And go Kevin!

CLARIFICATIONS

What follows is an account of the dynamics of Iraqi politics as these relate to the American occupation. The focus by necessity is a narrow one. This newsletter had in the past addressed other facets of the American invasion. Suffice it to say here that Iraq has revealed that a unipolar world does not bestow absolute power on the United States.

Moreover, it would belittle the intelligence of Russian and Chinese policy-makers for us to think that Iraq had not provided them an opportunity to pass untraceable money to this or that faction in the Iraqi insurgency, directly or through Syria, Iran and others. I would’ve if I were they. Certainly they are aware that the Iraqi experience should define the application of American power for decades to come. Not to mention controlling China by controlling its oil sources. (It's estimated that, by the year 2015, China would be importing 70% of its oil from the Middle East.)

Better stop the U.S. in Iraq before having to fight it off nearer to home.

Argument: The U.S. needs to stay in Iraq to balance Iranian power.

Iran and all in the world have learned not to fight the United States conventionally. They use a mix of politics and unconventional warfare, the Achilles' heel of the technologically-minded and domestically-constrained United States. When the U.S. thinks of unconventional warfare, it thinks of counter-insurgency, which is the reactionary way of ignoring politics.

In short, the U.S. can balance Iranian power conventionally from Qatar. As for Iraq, the United States already has lost the war. It’s shot itself in the foot way too many times. And it's incapable of flexibility. For now, it should watch from Qatar and decide on what factions in Iraq, if any, to support.

WHY WE SHOULD LEAVE

THAT’S NOT THE WAY TO THINK

The administration , the Congress, and the Complex cling to a non-dynamic take on events. These entities, driven by so many hidden interests and therefore un-objective and biased, take one photo shot of the events, then another months later, then another weeks later. The thread that ties these still photos is the so-called war on terrorism. But harping on the terrorist rubric, while conceivably helpful in mobilizing the American public for the long haul, has the sorry disadvantage of warping the thinking of the decision-makers themselves and that of the troops and their commanders in the field.

For even such obvious terror acts as the gruesome murder of humanitarian workers has a political purpose; and it helps little not to see that purpose. When the Iraqi resistance (face it, please: it's a "resistance!") murders (in cold blood) the worker of a humanitarian organization, it is denying the occupier a humanitarian cover, the occupier’s ruse to legitimize its naked aggression. It could, couldn’t it, offer the humanitarian worker the option of becoming a Muslim and avoiding death. But it doesn’t.

Having denied the occupier the humanitarian cover for its imperial grab, the Iraqi resistance has forced it into the Abu Ghraib and Haditha boxes. Accordingly, it has portrayed it as a sadistic torturer and a cold-blooded murderer of innocent civilians to the 300 million supporters of the resistance in the Arab world, and to the larger populace in the Islamic world.

THE GOAL OF THE SUNNI RESISTANCE

The resistance to America’s occupation of Iraq has been and still is mostly (not fully) Arab Sunni. Its methods include such acts as suicide bombings against Shiite civilians and all police and national guard recruits, Shiite and others. These bombings have a well-measured purpose: To see the American puppet state fail.

The death of Shiite civilians and the retaliation by Shiite militias against Arab Sunni civilians, in the end show a puppet state that is unable to provide the most basic of services: security. By assuring the state’s failure, the country’s economy remains weak, unemployment high, and legitimacy for the state absent. Accordingly, the occupier’s expenses remain exhorbitant, leading to a taxpayers’ revolt.

Why would the Arab Sunni want to see the American puppet state fail?

For one, that state is led by men who were (and, some maintain, still are) Iran’s agents, now double-agents. More importantly, the American puppet state has nothing to offer the Sunni, since it possesses no uniting and inclusive ideology. The puppet state is built of the promise of security. Which in itself offers an opportunity: You eat away at security, the very raison d’etre of the puppet state, and you have a winner. There’s little to lose, since the puppet state is not even nationalistic. It’s a puppet. It doesn’t have the pan-Arab secular (and therefore inclusive) underpinnings which gave its predecessor quite a lot of legitimacy.

When Mr. Bush defeated the secular and pan-Arab Baath, he took away any reason for the Iraqis to unite willingly. What was left was brute force: One group had to subdue the other, not persuade. To persuade, you need a common purpose. With the occupation and its machinations, there’s none. (Some Arab observers insist that the U.S. and allied Arab agents explode car bombs in Sunni neighborhoods as punishment after guerrilla attacks on U.S. troops. This ends up emptying into the Sunni goal of assuring the failure of the occupier's very puppet state.)

(My pessimism about Iraq is not permanent. The Iraqis sooner or later will pick up the pieces--maybe thirty to fifty years from today.)

What could the Arab Sunni have in common with the Arab Shiite under the American umbrella? Nothing.

Worse, seen from the Sunni perspective, America is not an unbiased occupier. This occupier sponsors a protectorate in a relentless war against Arab Sunni brethren in Israel/Palestine, an occupier who has a strategic alliance with the tormenter of the Palestinian Sunni Arabs.

As a consequence, U.S. troops die.

The same occupier bolsters Arab governments which members are of the most corrupt on the face of this planet, relentless in their greed and theft of their people's resources. These American puppet governments are more-or-less able to control their “Arab street” in normal times, especially when they have the money. In troubled times, these puppet governments siphon their opposition to the trouble spot du jour (Lebanon, Afghanistan, Iraq) and insulate themselves from the regional disturbance–a win-win situation.

As a consequence, U.S. troops die.

(Dear fellow capitalists: Don’t let my prose make you look for a foreign scapegoat. Using a metaphor you will understand: the buck stops at the White House.)

(The best reporting on the Arab street-in-turmoil is coming from Anthony Shedid, as was the very best reporting on Iraq. Declaration of conflict: Mr. Shedid’s ancestors hail from my town of birth in Lebanon.)

Back to Iraq:

While it is true that many Sunni were unhappy with the methods of the Jordanian Zarqawi, their unhappiness hardly separated them from the overall strategy of wanting the American puppet state to fail, including the firing up of a civil war by killing civilians. To put it bluntly, the Arab Sunni were upset with Zarqawi because he sent suicide bombers against Arab Sunni recruits (e.g., in Tikrit), not because he was murdering Arab Shiite.

(Iran, Jordan and Syria (therefore Russia) have now ganged up on the takfiris--the Zarqawi/bin Laden people, while the U.S. is lending support and money to a version of the same people in Syria--the Muslim Brothers. The U.S. now has placed these on the payroll. Yes Virginia, the United States has placed al Qaeda double agents on te payroll! Don't hold your breath thinking that the regional pressure on the takfiris will translate into calm and peace in Iraq. See the section below on the Shiites. One insurgency stops; the other will be lit up.)


WHAT ABOUT THE SHIITE?

For the sake of argument, let’s assume that the Arab Sunni quiet down or are totally defeated. What would be next?

By way of background, you should be aware that the Bush Administration has bought out the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) and Dawa. I don’t know how much this purchase of Iran’s agents had cost the American taxpayer. I suspect it’s in the billions. [Note to self: convert to Shiism, start a group in Iran, then get bought out by the Bush Administration for a couple of cool billions; the U.S. taxpayer is a sucker. Tell her/him it’s for fighting terrorism.]

But I doubt very much that these two or three parties (Dawa is more than one faction) have shed the thousands of Iranian agents within their ranks. After all, these parties were reared in Iran. Moron-like, I suspect that the American taxpayer is very likely paying the salaries of hundreds if not thousands of Iranian agents within the ranks of SCIRI and Dawa.

We also should be clear that Iran–-Islamic or non–-has clear and pressing interests in Iraq, foremost among which is assuring that the United States does not use Iraq as a base in its eventual military assault on Iran, and that Iraq remain weak and divided, lest it once again rises to balance Iranian power. Such is the thinking of the Iranians.

Having witnessed the U.S. buy out SCIRI and Dawa, Iran added its support to the Mahdi Army--to Muqtadha as-Sadr. This newsletter senses that Muqtadha is an Arab nationalist at heart. (It’s only a sense.) Therefore, he could split from Iran should the circumstances (they’re quite specific) warrant it. (The U.S., through Jordan, had tried to buy out Muqtadha, but failed.)

The small Islamic Fadila Party seems to be close to the Mahdi Army; and both are anti-American. I don’t know much about Fadila except that recently, after U.S. troops swooped down from Baghdad to arrest the chairman of the council of the province of Karbala, 3Aqil Sale7 al-Zubaidi, a Fadila leader, on suspicion of having been involved in attacks against them, Sadr men demonstrated in protest. Fadila strikes me as an Iranian creation. Fadila's very name smacks of an intelligence front. But I’m not confident of this. In reaching this conclusion, I'm inspired by the Syrian invasion of Lebanon during that country's civil war, and invasion that had America's (and therefore Israel's) blessing.

Theoretically, should the Arab Sunni be subdued, the burden of forcing the Americans out should fall to the Mahdi Army.

Should the Mahdi Army heighten its war pitch against the American occupier, it should expect the Shiite young to flood its ranks. The more it fights the Americans, the more popular it would become, even if it loses each and every “battle.” SCIRI and Dawa could ill-afford to stand by, idle, while the Shiite young flock to Mahdi. Therefore, at a minimum, Mahdi’s war with the Americans should tilt the intra-Shia debate in favor of total and absolute American withdrawal from Iraq. No bases; no monstrous embassy... Such would be the more likely dynamic within the Shiite camp.

So, in essence, the United States can withdraw now or it will be forced to withdraw later. Lose more troops and money by delaying the inevitable; or lose less by taking the initiative.

The argument that withdrawing now would leave Iraq in a state of a much worse civil war is a non-starter. A much worse civil war will occur now if the U.S. withdraws, and it will occur later when the U.S. is forced to withdraw. Only if the United States spends $100 billion per year on buying out everyone in Iraq–pure cash in the pockets of all, year after year-- would a civil war remain tame after the U.S. withdraws.


THE KURDS

Some believe that the United States can head north for bases, and watch the civil war from the mountains. But it’ll have to locate itself really deep inside those mountains, as far north as possible, since Kirkuk and its surroundings will have enough Arabs–-Sunni and Shiite-–to disturb U.S. presence. The relative peace we see in the north is in good part related to Iranian-Turkish coordination against the Kurdistan Workers Party (the PKK), the foremost formenter of civil war inside Turkey.

But, should the U.S. move north, we should expect Iranian and other money to flow to the PKK, resulting in a re-heating of the civil war inside Turkey. Which in turn should place pressure on the Kurdistan Patriotic Union (Talabani) and especially on the Kurdistan Democratic Party (Barazani) to rush to the assistance of their Turkish brethren.

U.S. troops, once again, should find themselves in the midst of chaotic goal-less warfare.

CONCLUSION

Viewed dynamically, and because of its physical presence in Iraq and its war by proxy on the Palestinians, the United States has no reliable allies left within Iraq. The secular and modernist Iraqis, the once potential natural allies to the U.S. and Europe, are long gone thanks to Mr. Bush and the extremist Judeo-Christian right-wing ayatollahs around him and their liberal adorers--the Thomas Friedmans.


Neither the Iraqi Sunni (now Islamists) nor the Shiite (now theocratic) for the foreseeable future offer the U.S. the prospect of long-term alliances. And Turkey could not bargain away its territorial integrity by cooperating too closely with the United States in Kurdish northern Iraq. (Turkey's relations with the United States are cool. Now is the first time in fifty years that there are no pending arms contracts between the two.)

Time to bring in the United Nations to clean up after Mr. Bush, Mr. Cheney, and Mr. Rumsfeld. U.N. troops could not halt the drive towards a more vicious civil war; but neither can U.S. troops. Only that U.N. troops and not U.S. troops would be the target for the insurgents, and I have a feeling they’d be much cheaper.